Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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Several Hundred Acres Of Bare Rocks, With Grassy
Flats Sloping Down From Them To The West, And Forming Little
Watercourses Or Flat Water-Channels; There Were Great Numbers Of
Crows, Many Fresh Natives' Tracks, And The Smoke Of Several Fires In
The Surrounding Scrub.
Tommy took the lower ground, while I searched
the rocks.
He soon found a small native well in a grassy
water-channel, and called out to me. On joining him I found that there
was very little water in sight, but I thought a supply might be got
with a shovel, and I decided to send him on my camel to bring the
party back, for we had come over 200 miles from Queen Victoria's
Spring, and this was the first water I had seen since leaving there.
We gave little Reechy, or as I usually called her Screechy, all the
water we could get out of the well, with one of Tommy's boots; she
drank it out of his hat, and they started away. I fully believed there
was more water about somewhere, and I intended having a good hunt
until either I found it or the party came. I watched Tommy start, of
course at full speed, for when he got a chance of riding Screechy he
was in his glory, and as she was behind the mob, and anxious to
overtake them, she would go at the rate of twenty miles an hour, if
allowed to gallop; but much to my surprise, when they had gone about
200 yards along the grassy water-channel, apparently in an instant,
down went Reechy on her knees, and Tommy, still in the saddle, yelled
out to me, "Plenty water here!
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